[Congressional Record: March 12, 1998 (Senate)]
[Page S1876-S1882]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr12mr98-126]
RUSSIAN BW PROGRAM
Mr. KYL. Mr President, I call to the attention of my colleagues an
article appearing in the March 9 edition of The New Yorker magazine
that offers a chilling account of Russia's offensive biological weapons
program. This article is based on an extensive interview with Mr. Ken
Alibek, a Russian defector who was once second in command of the
Russian offensive biological weapons program. Alibek's description of
the Russian BW program is generally considered authoritative by a wide
range of U.S. experts.
The article provides a number of startling details about the Russian
offensive BW program, also known as Biopreparat. Most startling of all
is just how little we in the United States knew about this program.
Despite the fact that Biopreparat was established in 1973--the year
after the Soviet
[[Page S1877]]
Union signed the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and pledged to
forego an offensive BW program--and despite intelligence to the
contrary, some in the U.S. scientific and arms control communities
continued to maintain that Russia was not violating the treaty up to
the moment that President Yeltsin admitted otherwise in 1992.
Mr. President, what the Russians had accomplished by 1991 is
frightening. According to Alibek, the Soviet Union had warheads for
carrying biological weapons on intercontinental missiles that were
aimed at the United States. These warheads could carry smallpox, plague
and anthrax. The Soviets had apparently weaponized the Marburg virus--a
hemorrhagic virus as gruesome as the Ebola virus--and were ready to
begin large scale manufacture of the weapon as the Soviet Union was
crumbling apart. Alibek is concerned that scientists may have left
Russia with samples of this virus and other deadly bacteria. The
possibility that Russian scientists, know-how and biological materials
are available to rogue states and terrorists underscores the critical
importance of improving our domestic preparedness to respond to BW
attacks against the United States.
We do not know the extent of the Russian biological weapons program
today. There is evidence to suggest that a clandestine program
continues, hidden away in military facilities run by the Ministry of
Defense, which are off-limits to the West. The trilateral process,
which was set up by the United States, United Kingdom, and Russia in
1992 and calls for inspections of Russian biological-related
facilities, has broken down. It has been years since an inspection took
place. The Russians have objected to visits to military facilities. And
where inspections occurred, the inspectors faced the same obstacles as
U.N. inspectors face in Iraq.
Mr. President, The New Yorker article should be required reading for
all Senators. I ask unanimous consent that this article be printed in
the Record. I understand from the Government Printing Office that it
will cost approximately $2504 to include this article in the Record.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the New Yorker, Mar. 9, 1998]
Annals of Warfare--The Bioweaponeers[Full text of article omitted here]